9.18.2010

Heaven On A Plate: Enoteca Drago's Truffled Pizza

Yesterday I died and went to heaven, if only for fifteen minutes or so. They say it happens when you least expect it, and that was surely the case for me. I was at lunch with a friend at Enoteca Drago, a small Italian wine bar in Beverly Hills, where we were enjoying a relaxing Friday afternoon filled with wonderful white wine (an Italian Gavi for her, a French Sancerre for me) and light salads. It was then that we decided to split a pizza. Perusing the pizza portion of the menu, we wanted something more exotic than the traditional Margherita, but not something as heavy as, say, the Breakfast pizza, with onion, mushroom, bacon and eggs. So we settled on the Bomba, a pizza that, from the onset, sounded simple enough: mozzarella, caramelized onions and black truffles. Yeah, right. That was where we couldn't have been more wrong.

What happened next was incredible. Our waiter presented us with something I had never seen before: a plateful of what appeared to be layers of crisp, blistered crust covering what I could only assume was a pizza underneath. After all, we had ordered a pizza, hadn't we? Right away -- keep in mind we hadn't even touched the thing yet -- it smelled of sweet onions, salty mozzarella cheese and earthy black truffles. While I couldn't see them, I knew they were hiding in there. And I was going to find them. I sheepishly used my fork to lift the super-thin crust barely an inch, and what I saw made me gasp and exclaim an exaggerated, "Oh my God."

What Heaven Looks Like

The mozzarella cheese was still incredibly hot and pliable, coating both super-thin top and bottom crusts, stretching and oozing as I barely touched it. The onions, cut paper thin and caramelized to a perfect golden brown, had practically melted into the cheese, their purpose clearly not to be seen but to infuse the pizza with a light sweetness. And finally, the truffles. Good God, the truffles. Sliced across the entirely truffle -- not chopped or stingy in any way -- they were almost one inch across and they were... everywhere. I almost felt guilty looking behind the curtain (or under the crust, as it were), because I wasn't expecting this. I slowly dropped the crust, put my fork down and looked at our waiter, who was awaiting my reaction. His smile revealed that I was clearly not the first Drago diner to have such a magical reaction to the Pizza Bomba, as he simply nodded and said, "Do you want me to put in an order for a second one?" I hesitated about a second too long in reluctantly saying "no." A girl has to have some restraint.

Peek-A-Boo, Pizza Bomba-Style

Don't let this fool you. We ate the whole thing.

The next time you're in the Beverly Hills neighborhood... You know what? Scratch that, just make a point to go to Enoteca Drago and order the Pizza Bomba. My friend and I savored it for about half an hour, sipping our white wines and chatting, stopping every so often to remark at the pizza. "Can you even believe this?" was said often, as we twirled the pieces of pizza in our fingertips, admiring the truffles and never-ending mozzarella. The crust never got in the way, instead providing a paper-thin foundation for the rest of the ingredients. It was honestly one of the best things -- pizza or otherwise -- that I've ever eaten.